The Mossack Fonseca files show the critical importance that banks hold in the offshore world – and ANZ is the most visible of the Australian banks in the offshore space.

ANZ appears in 7548 of the Mossack documents, reflecting the bank's extensive work in New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Samoa and Jersey.

By comparison, Westpac appears in 995 documents, National Australian Bank 261 documents and Commonwealth Bank just 164 documents. Most of these are references to clients' bank accounts or reference letters written for their clients when they buy a Mossack shelf company.

ANZ's figures are boosted by the Jersey operations of its Grindlays Bank subsidiary in the 1990s. ANZ sold Grindlays in 2000. More recently, ANZ had three times as many references in Mossack Fonseca documents in 2015 as Westpac.

However, an unprecedented leak of almost 40 years’ worth of documents has revealed the firm also facilitates massive money laundering, tax avoidance and criminal activity, including drugs and arms dealing

CREDITS

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is one of the big three global providers of tax haven registry services
Much of their work is for clients who have perfectly legal reasons for wanting to set up companies offshore

Mossack Fonseca operates across 21 tax havens

DATA JOURNALIST: EDMUND TADROS
INTERACTIVE: LES HEWITT

The Panama Papers

The Panama Papers investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Le Monde and dozens of media outlets around the world exposes how a network of big banks and law firms sell financial secrecy to politicians, fraudsters and drug traffickers as well as billionaires, celebrities, sports stars and more.
Based on a trove of more than 11 million secret files, the investigation allows a never-before-seen view inside the offshore world – providing a day-to-day, decade-by-decade look at how dark money flows through the global financial system, breeding crime and stripping national treasuries of tax revenues.

ABOUT

companies, trusts and foundations

intermediaries such as lawyers and tax advisors who directed their clients to use Mossack Fonseca’s services

- 2.6 terabytes of information

14,153

from 1977 to December 2015

11.5 million documents

The data includes information about

214,488

UK prime minister David Cameron’s (right) stockbroker father was a Mossack Fonseca client who used the law firm to shield his investment fund from UK taxes

Mossack Fonseca employees worked in late 2014 to remove paper documents from its Nevada branch and delete computer traces of the link between the Nevada and the Panama operations, ahead of a US court order that it turn over information on 123 companies that Argentine prosecutors had linked to a corruption scandal involving an associate of former presidents Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (left)

Associates of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin (right) secretly shuffled as much as $US2 billion through banks and shadow companies

Employees of Mossack Fonseca destroyed and hid documents to mask the law firm’s involvement in Brazil's bribery and money laundering investigation, dubbed “Operation Car Wash”. So far the scandal has led to criminal charges against leading politicians and an investigation of popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (right)

British Virgin Islands authorities fined Mossack Fonseca $US37,500 for violating anti-money laundering rules because the firm incorporated a company for the son of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak (left) but failed to identify the connection, even after father and son were charged with corruption

Note: There are legitimate uses for offshore companies, and we do not intend to suggest or imply that any individuals or entities included in the interactive were in violation of the law

Family members of at least eight current or former members of China’s Politburo Standing Committee have offshore companies arranged though Mossack Fonseca, including president Xi Jinping’s (left) brother-in-law

8

Mossack Fonseca clients include…

61 associates of current or former heads of state
128 current and former politicians and public officials
29 Forbes listed billionaires

Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca is one of the big three global providers of tax haven registry services
Much of their work is for clients who have perfectly legal reasons for wanting to set up companies offshore
However, an unprecedented leak of almost 40 years’ worth of documents has revealed the firm also facilitates massive money laundering, tax avoidance and criminal activity, including drugs and arms dealing

Employees of Mossack
Fonseca destroyed and hid
documents to mask the
law firm’s involvement
in Brazil's bribery and
money laundering
investigation, dubbed
“Operation Car Wash”. So far the scandal has led to criminal charges against leading politicians and an investigation of popular former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (right)

The ANZ remains the dominant force in banking in the Pacific. In Samoa, the ANZ's influence is such that in 2008 when the country's Registrar of International and Foreign Companies, Erna Va'ai, and a director of Samoa International Finance Authority visited Mossack Fonseca's offices to promote business, they were accompanied by the head of ANZ Bank (Samoa), Peter Johnson.

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The apparent closeness raises questions as to whether the bank was also advising the Samoan government on Australia's tax information exchange agreement (TIEA) proposal.

Banks are the key to the offshore world because an offshore company is useless until it has a bank account, and under the draconian "know your customer" laws a bank can only open an account if it knows who the name of the company's real owner.

"It is very difficult to open a corporate account," a Mossach Fonseca executive complained in an April 2013 report.

"Unlike before, loads of [Due Diligence] needs to be proceeded before and during the account opening. However, Raymond has recommended a new bank named ANZ BANK. It is an Australian bank but the service is as good as other commercial bank. This is a really good tip."

Three months later the Mossack executive reported meeting an ANZ officer in Hong Kong who said "she would love to assist me to go through with some cases".

An ANZ spokesman told The Australian Financial Review: "
We reject the suggestion that ANZ has a 'dominant position' in servicing clients in tax havens or that ANZ is more willing to service such clients."

ANZ conducted extensive ongoing due diligence procedures.

"Customer risk of tax crimes is one of many factors ANZ takes into account when assessing customer risk of money laundering," he said

"
We note that the 2013 comment you refer to states that ANZ's 'KYC procedure is very strict'."

The ICIJ's 2012 Offshore Leaks database previously showed several Australian banking employees held investments in Cook Islands and Hong Kong companies, raising the vexed issue of how much banks should know about their employees' personal finances.

Sydney lawyer Debra Lighezzolo told the Financial Review she had not informed the National Australia Bank when she used her NAB email account in December 2007 to order a Seychelles company, Lynus Development Limited from Mossack Fonseca, "to hold investments in private and public companies".

Lynus would be owned by Fencourt Foundation in Panama, which Ms Lighezzolo would control.

The Mossack Fonseca files show she supplied documentation including a copy of her passport and a recommendation from a St George Bank manager, who said Ms Lighezzolo had held her existing account with St George for 20 years.

Ms Lighezzolo's London lawyer, Paul Puxon told Mossack Fonseca at the time: "It is only for the holding of shares in a listed company – the shares will not be issued for some time, but I need to give the lawyers involved in the readmission of the shares to the AIM market details of the company number and copies of its incorporation documents".

There is no indication in the Mossack files whether the proposed investment proceeded. However, it raises the thorny question of how much banks should know about what their staff do in their private investments.

In a statement for Lighezzolo, Mr Puxon told the AFR that her 2007 decision to set up the structure "was not connected in any way with her work for the bank".

Ms Lighezzolo, whose email sign-off described her as Principal Counsel for nabCapital, "does not know what the bank's policy was as regards executives holding shares. Our client was not an executive of the bank," Mr Puxon said.

Ms Lighezzolo had joined NAB under a short-term contract in September 2007 after a year at Commonwealth Bank and five years at Westpac.

While some US banks for governance reasons restrict senior staff from holding accounts with other banks, Mr Puxon said the NAB's only requirement was that Ms Lighezzolo should have a NAB account to process her salary.

"As far as our client is aware there were no other restrictions to prevent her from having accounts with other banks."

He said the Seychelles/Panama Foundation structure "was not and has not been used by our client".

A NAB spokeswoman said the bank was legally barred from discussing personal finances of former employees but said NAB had "a strict code of conduct that all employees must adhere to as part of their employment, which specifies that commercial and personal interests must never interfere with the ability to make sound, objective business decisions – and that employees must help safeguard market integrity."

"NAB requires all employees to disclose where there is any potential conflict of interest."

Insisting that employees only held bank accounts at NAB would be an invasion of privacy, she said.